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11/29/2014

How an AR-15 was used to protect a gas station from looting in Ferguson

This story shows that some humanity has survived the events in Ferguson. From Reuters:

Since looting first erupted following the August police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown, nearly all the businesses in a 2 square mile area of this St Louis suburb have had to board up. One exception - a Conoco gas station and convenience store.
At least a dozen stores have been set ablaze and others looted in Ferguson . . . .
On Tuesday night, as police and soldiers took up positions in the parking lots of virtually every strip mall and big box store around it, the forecourt of the brightly lit gas station was busy with customers.
One, a six feet, eight-inch tall man named Derrick Jordan – “Stretch,” as friends call him - whisked an AR-15 assault rifle out from a pickup truck parked near the entrance.
Jordan, 37, was one of four black Ferguson residents who spent Tuesday night planted in front of the store, pistols tucked into their waistbands, waiting to ward off looters or catch shoplifters.
Jordan and the others guarding the gas station are all black. The station's owner is white.
. . . By some accounts, the Brown shooting has heightened racial tensions in the city. But not at the gas station.
"We would have been burned to the ground many times over if it weren’t for them,” said gas station owner Doug Merello, whose father first bought it in 1984. . . .